02 Sep 09 New in Calendar: Sports schedules and contacts’ birthdays
People keep track of lots of things in their Google Calendars — meetings, business trips, due dates and conference calls. But when I started my summer internship at Google, I wondered why it wasn’t easier to add calendar events for the fun stuff in life, like birthdays and sports schedules.
Now, when you look under “Other Calendars,” click “Add,” then “Browse Interesting Calendars” (or use this link to the Calendar directory), you’ll find calendars for hundreds of teams in dozens of sports leagues — everything from the National Football League to the Korean FA Cup.
When you subscribe to your favorite team’s calendar, you’ll see every game listed, updated in real time with the score as the game progresses.
You can also subscribe to a “Contacts’ Birthdays and Events” calendar, which will add all of your contacts’ birthdays to Google Calendar. Data is pulled from your Gmail contacts and your friends’ Google profiles.
Finally, we also have two new Calendar Labs features for you to check out: “Dim future repeating events” makes recurring meetings more transparent over time, helping more important meetings pop out, and “Add any gadget by URL” gives you the flexibility put any gadget you’d like in your calendar.
Tags: gmail, Gmail News, gmail tips
13 May 09 Tasks, now in Calendar too
Ever since we launched Google Calendar, people in our forum have been pretty vocal about a missing piece — an integrated task list. “To-do would be tooo-rific,” “I really, really, really need to use a to-do list,” and my favorite: “I’ll join your team to help you get it done!” The rumble turned into a roar a few months ago when we launched Tasks in Gmail Labs. Now we’ve integrated Tasks into Google Calendar as well.
To get started, open Calendar and click on the “Tasks” link on the left hand side. You’ll see the familiar task list you’re used to using in Gmail, with some Calendar-specific additions:
- Tasks that have due dates will automatically appear on your calendar. To create a task with a due date in Calendar, click on an empty space in month view or the all-day section of week view, and be sure select the “Task” option.
- To attach a due date to an existing task, click the right-arrow from within the task list, and then click on the calendar icon.
- You can modify a task’s due date by dragging it to a different date, just as you would with a regular calendar event.
- To mark a task completed from within Calendar, just click on the task’s checkbox. (Isn’t that satisfying, overachievers?)
- To keep track of due dates before they arrive, there’s a nifty new “Sort by due date” feature available in the Actions menu at the bottom of your task list. While sorting by due date, you can reschedule a task by clicking on it in your list, then pressing control and the up or down arrow key.
While working to help bring this feature to you, I used it to keep track of my own tasks. Now I can finally check off the last one in that list: “write blog post.” Phew.
Tags: gmail, Gmail News, gmail tips
04 Mar 09 View Google Calendar offline
In addition to offline access to Gmail while you’re traveling or without a strong internet connection, you can now see your Google Calendar events when you’re disconnected. Offline Calendar lets you view your existing schedule and events, but not edit them, so you don’t have to print out calendars the night before a trip. This feature has been available to businesses and schools using Google Apps for about a month; we’re now turning it on for everyone.
Like Gmail, the offline feature of Calendar uses Gears, an open source browser extension that adds offline functionality directly to the browser.
To enable offline Calendar access, sign in to Google Calendar and look for the “Offline Beta” link in the upper right-hand corner of your account, next to your username. We’ve released this early and are still ironing out some kinks, so if you encounter any issues, be sure to let us know. If you access Calendar through the Premier or Education Editions of Google Apps, your domain administrator will first have to elect to turn on new features from the Domain Settings page of the Google Apps control panel.
There are multiple ways to see your calendar when you’re away from your desk — in addition to offline mode, we offer two-way sync for iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile and Blackberry devices. So wherever you go, Google Calendar can be there with you.
Tags: gmail, Gmail News, gmail tips
